Streamlining and simplifying the rules for gas appliances will further improve their safety
13 May 2014 10:55 AM
The European Commission
yesterday proposed to replace the gas appliances directive governing the safety
of gas-fired appliances and related safety, regulating and controlling devices
by directly applicable regulation. This means that the 28 pieces of national
legislation transposing the current directive will be replaced by one single
piece of legislation, which will be available in all official languages of the
EU. Examples of gas appliances are cookers, stoves, radiant heaters,
instantaneous hot water heaters, gas lights and central heating boilers.
Consequently, the legislation covers a very wide range of common consumer and
commercial products from simple camping type equipment to heating boilers for
big building blocks. Only gas appliances used in industrial processes are not
covered.
The proposal will introduce more
coherent rules which will lower compliance costs for businesses, especially for
small and medium-sized enterprises. This will include clearer responsibilities
for manufacturers, importers and distributors selling products. Product safety
will be improved through better traceability which will allow tracking down
defective or unsafe products. Authorities will be better equipped to stop
dangerous products imported from third countries through improved national
market surveillance. The proposal will therefore make product safety more
effective across the EU.
European Commissioner Michel
Barnier, acting Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship,
said: "The proposal to update the gas appliances directive is yet
another initiative to streamline EU product legislation leading to reductions
in administrative burden and costs. Common rules for industrial products allow
manufacturers to have more legal certainty. They can better organise their
manufacturing processes, enhance the quality and safety of products and invest
in innovation. It will lead to a strengthening of the single market helping
businesses to grow".
Gas safety will be further
enhanced
The gas safety will be further
enhanced by improving and clarifying the requirements each gas appliance has to
fulfil. For instance, in order to increase the inherent safety of products, the
regulation will require that the manufacturers always have to avoid or reduce
the risks instead of using only warnings alone. The safety requirements each
appliance must meet will be updated in order to respond to technological
progress to ensure compatibility with new innovative technologies and
increasing use of gaseous fuels from renewable sources.
Costs for enterprises will be
lowered
More coherent rules across all
product sectors will lower compliance costs for businesses, especially for
small and medium-sized enterprises (IP/11/1385).
The updated rules will be
aligned across different product sectors aim to avoid conflicting or
overlapping requirements for products governed by more than one piece of
legislation and will ensure easier market access and a higher level of
protection of life and property. They will involve:
-
Clearer responsibilities for
manufacturers, importers and distributors selling products;
-
More guarantees for product
safety through better traceability allowing tracking down defective or unsafe
products and through clearer rules and improved supervision of conformity
assessment bodies;
-
Improved national market
surveillance as authorities will be better equipped to stop dangerous products
imported from third countries:
-
Improved clarity of the
provisions through introduction of definitions for sector specific terminology
used reducing the need for interpretation thus facilitating the application of
the legislation;
-
Introduction of harmonised
content and form for the communication of gas supply conditions in the Member
States enabling designing and constructing of safe and correctly performing
products; and
-
Clarifying the relationship with
other Union harmonisation legislation applying to gas
appliances.
The initiative is part of a
general effort to make product safety more effective across the EU, to ensure
greater consistency and to facilitate complying with the rules throughout all
sectors. Similar proposals were recently adopted for ten other industrial
sectors (IP/14/111, IP/14/319). This should help to overcome conflicting or
overlapping requirements for products governed by more than one piece of
legislation
More
information:
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/pressure-and-gas/documents/gad/ind
ex_en.htm